


In a Mirror Dimly

by KtwoNtwo



Series: The Emperor's Edge Collection [6]
Category: The Emperor's Edge Series - Lindsay Buroker
Genre: Cross-posted from EE Forum, F/M, Mission Fic, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:11:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1232884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KtwoNtwo/pseuds/KtwoNtwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the murky world of espionage where everything is one or another shade of grey the meeting of two elite agents can go one of two ways: conflict or cooperation.  Which will it be when the young assassian Sicarius encounters an older female counterpart in the middle of a mission?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Standard Disclaimer: The characters and other information from the Emperor’s Edge series and all rights thereto belong to Lindsay Buroker. I’m only playing around with them for my own amusement.

Odds were that Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest was annoyed, Sicarius thought, as he looked up the stairs to the third floor. The guards at the top were stiffly standing at the top; barely daring to move least they bring themselves to the great leader’s attention and potential wrath. They were only posted at the top of the stairs, as opposed to in front of the office door, when Hollowcrest had ordered them there. He usually moved the guard post to allow him to berate a subordinate or receive a report from one of his agents out of ear shot of the soldiers. Depending on the reason Hollowcrest had moved them; they’d be standing there for some time afterword and woe unto anyone who disturbed him before he was ready to be disturbed. Judging from the guard’s posture and slight look of strain on their faces they’d been standing there since near the beginning of the watch some three hours earlier. Ah, something serious then, Sicarius mused. He hadn’t overheard any rumors of disciplinary action on the way through the Barracks so it must be news from somewhere in the Empire.

Sicarius silently stalked up the stairs and passed between the guards waiving them to stillness with a little hand motion. Usual protocol was for a guard to knock and announce any visitor to Hollowcrest’s office. A few years ago Sicarius had taken to circumventing it one way or another preferring to watch Hollowcrest’s reaction when he suddenly realized that the assassin was in the room. The guards were often happy to oblige him in this manner. Most of the elite guard, even though they were almost twice his age and a good deal larger than he was, feared him. They often would treat his requests as direct orders despite the fact that he was not in the official chain of command. These two were no exception. However, he was a bit surprised to hear one guard whisper to the other, “Better him than us” after he had passed them. The guards were all well aware of the excellent acoustics in the hallway. He turned his head slightly to catch a look at the guard who had spoken with his peripheral vision. Judging from the guard’s face, the whisper had been a warning. Hollowcrest must really be in a bad mood for the guard to even consider alerting him. Without turning he gave a small jerk of his head acknowledging the comment.

Continuing down the hallway to Hollowcrest’s office he pondered the change in the guards’ treatment of him. Word of the nature and extent of his _punishment_ after the debacle over the Kyattese president seemed to be common knowledge all over the Imperial Barracks. Not the details or location of his _failure_ of course, but the fact that he had somehow angered both Emperor Raumesys and Hollowcrest to the point that his _punishment_ had left his very survival in doubt for over a week. Sicarius suspected that Hollowcrest had engineered the leak of that information as an object lesson of sorts on the price of failure to do one’s duty. Sicarius had to concede that while the message had been received all over the Barracks it had also had an interesting apparently unintended, side effect. Somehow, he didn’t really understand why, this information made the rank and file guards consider him to a limited extent as a fellow _victim_ of over-reactive superior officers. It was not enough for them to attempt to approach him directly but they now tended to give him subtle hints, like this recent warning.

He hesitated in front of the office door listening carefully. Sicarius could hear steps, then a pause, then more steps and another pause. Hollowcrest was pacing. Listening for a moment longer Sicarius drew up a mental map of the office and calculated from the sounds where Hollowcrest was most likely to be. Timing his entry so that Hollowcrest would be facing away from the door, he slipped into the office. He was pleased to note that his calculation had been accurate. Hollowcrest was currently striding toward the window, his back toward the door. If he continued his usual pacing pattern he’d then pause at the window, turn and stride across the office. Pacing while deep in thought was typical behavior for Hollowcrest. Barracks scuttlebutt was that during the height of the Nurian war staff had to replace the rug every five months or so due to wear. Sicarius knew for a fact that it had been more like every other month give or take a week.

Somewhat surprisingly Hollowcrest didn’t turn to continue his pacing when he reached the window. He merely stopped and stared out into the courtyard. Cessation of pacing usually indicated that Hollowcrest had reached a decision. The fact that he wasn’t in the process of immediately implementing it meant he wasn’t terribly pleased with something about that decision. After a minute or so, Hollowcrest shook his head slightly turned and started toward the door. It took him a full stride before he noticed Sicarius.

Hollowcrest was visibly startled as he came to an abrupt halt. He quickly gathered himself and said “Good” half to himself. He then asked “Are you 100%?”

No thanks to you, was Sicarius’ immediate thought but he repressed it. Showing even a bit of anger at his treatment would be very dangerous. If Hollowcrest or Raumesys ever suspected that his loyalties were not complete and wholehearted then he would be eliminated one way or another. Dead was not a viable option, especially now since he suspected that the Empress Marathai was pregnant. Careful not to let anything show on his face he gave his short, curt nod in response rather than risk saying anything. No response had been really necessary since the question was in large part redundant. He’d been ordered to report when he was fit for duty and that was what he was doing.

“The Empire has a problem,” Hollowcrest continued.

Sicarius had always found it vaguely annoying that Hollowcrest phrased all of his assignments as _for the empire_ regardless of whether they involved direct orders from the Emperor or were just his own personal intelligence projects. Today the phrase grated. Nevertheless he didn’t let that emotion show either. He simply waited to see what type of assignment Hollowcrest had for him this time.

“You’ve been out of the loop. We’ve settled with the Kyattese but the negotiations with the Nurians to formally end the Western Sea Conflict are still ongoing. Certain items in the negotiations as well as a few incidents that we can’t attribute to that damn Kyattese cryptoanalyst with the unpronounceable name,” Hollowcrest paused, distracted by attempting to remember the name.

“Komitopis” Sicarius prompted.

“Hmph, Yes.” Hollowcrest snorted then continued, “Indicate that we have a leak. The boys downstairs in the intelligence office have managed to trace the source back to Port Rochelle. They’ve narrowed it down to the port commander, Ravencrest, or someone who has access to his files.” Hollowcrest grimaced and muttered half under his breath, “I never did like the security set up down there.”

Port Rochelle. Sicarius knew that it was one of a number of small ports used for loading final supplies and topping off the coal stores for ships entering the Northern Earathu Theater of Operations. It also served as a location for adding special items to warships that were sensitive enough not to risk exposing in the busy shipyards and main fleet ports. In fact, it was where Sicarius had caught his transport to the Raptor, Starcrest’s command ship, on that Kayatt mission.

The security there was a compromise. It had to be relatively high due to its use as a secret loading area but it also had to look just like any other small scale resupply depot on the coast to avoid attracting undue attention from foreign intelligence operatives. A tricky balance to pull off. The only thing that made it less than impossible was the fact that it was also a major train hub. Thus, having the area periodically flooded with troops and equipment could be attributable to normal rotation of empire forces as opposed to anything secret. The fact that a few of the troops and equipment ended up on ships rather than continuing on would not be obvious in the general hubbub and confusion of large scale troop movement.

Sicarius reviewed his memories of the place. The port commander had a set of offices at the port itself as well as a house in the town. Those were relatively secure locations but Ravencrest was a local. Didn’t he have an estate right outside of town? Some research was clearly in order, Sicarius thought to himself. Hollowcrest was waiting for some sort of response from him to the previous statement. Perversely, Sicarius decided not to give him one. He simply stood there, motionless, and waited to see how long it would take before Hollowcrest continued what had turned into a pre-mission briefing.

When Hollowcrest realized that no response would be forthcoming he said, “We need you to get down there. Find the leak, determine its extent and plug it. Your usual parameters apply on this one. Lt. Sorens in intelligence has the file. You can hitch a ride down on the normal troop rotation train that leaves in three days.”

The last was clearly a dismissal. Sicarius nodded in response and turned to leave the office intentionally failing to salute. While salutes were not something he had given the commander of the armies regularly, he had previously used them as an acknowledgement of his acceptance of an assignment. Sometime in the last month of his recovery Sicarius had decided that not saluting would be part of his overall plan of action. Salutes implied a measure of respect. The key was going to be to walk a line just shy of creating a suspicion of loyalty issues but with enough quasi-insubordination to cause a bit of heartburn. As he left the office he watched Hollowcrest closely in the reflection of a glass fronted display cabinet to judge the reaction to the lack of salute. Hollowcrest had a faint frown on his face. Yes indeed, Sicarius thought, he noticed. Good, he will assume that his little _lesson_ is causing some resentment. That will keep his mind focused on me and not on other potential questions such as a pregnancy where none had happened before despite the wealth of opportunity. Pleased with the response to his change in behavior Sicarius exited Hollowcrest’s office and headed off to locate Lt. Sorens.


	2. Chapter 2

Katerina Lenora Norian shifted the basket full of clean linens to her other hip and surreptitiously stretched her upper back muscles. Not that anyone here would understand what she was doing. No, if anyone had been observing they would only see a maid servant pausing on the stair to adjust her burden before continuing. Shards I hate doing maid servants, she thought, beggars are much easier. No matter how good a shape she was in there was something about the muscle groups required to be used in performing duties of a household maid that made her ache all over for several days regardless of how much she had trained before starting an assignment. One of these days, in her infinite free time between missions of course, she’d figure out just what it was and design a training regime to fix the problem. But that doesn’t get the assigned household work done or advance the mission she mused as she continued up the stairs.

When her superior Xenon, the Kendorian spymaster, had given her the task of tracing missing dispatches from their agent in Port Rochelle she had thought it was simply a method to get her out of sight after the Kyattese let down. Now that mission had been a waste of time. An enjoyable waste of time, but a waste none the less. She’d been scrambled into a poorly backstopped position as the mistress to a Kendorian dilettante in the Kayttese capital after they’d received some hard intelligence that the Turgonians were sending an agent after the Kayttese President. She had then spent the next three months doing the _social dance_ waiting for a threat that never materialized. Suddenly the war was over and she’d been called home. The powers that be didn’t seem to think the intelligence had been all that sound in the first place. They were making noises about _beach parties for spies_ as well as threatening to cut the departmental budget so she was happy to be out of it. But still she wondered what exactly had happened. Their intelligence had been sound. They knew a Turgonian agent had been sent but something had gone array on that side of the equation. Xenon had speculated, when she’d asked him, that it had something to do with the Turgonian Admiral Starcrest’s death which occurred just before the war ended but they’d most likely never know for sure.

Not knowing. Ah, that was both the benefit and curse of an elite field agent in the shadow wars she thought as she neatly stacked the linens in the 2nd floor cupboard. What you didn’t know, you couldn’t tell, but it sure could come around and bite you if you didn’t watch it. She, as the premier operative in the department, knew more than most and tended to get _bit_ less. However, that also meant if she was ever captured she might have to take permanent measures to avoid revealing state secrets. Not something she wanted to spend much time to contemplate. Ah well, that’s the risk of a life in the shadows for you.

Much better to focus on the questions and answers to those questions that needed to be pursued. This assignment, for example, was turning into a mass of questions with no easy answers. Their agent in Port Rochelle was supposed to have been running a classic honey trap. Simple mission objective; become Commander Ravencrest’s mistress, gather blackmail information enough to turn him, and funnel anything interesting she could get her hands on back home in the meantime. The agent had managed the first, was working on the second and had been quite successful with the third but over the last six months or so things had changed. First it had been a dispatch that had gone missing. It wouldn’t have been noticed except the subsequent dispatch had made a cross reference to a piece of information that had never been received. That set off a major analysis of all dispatches from that agent which revealed that there might be another two or more dispatches gone astray.

Questions, questions and more questions. What had happened to the dispatches? It was clear the Turgonian high command didn’t have them otherwise the agent and most likely Ravencrest would be dead. There had been enough time for Turgonian intelligence to trace the information leak back from the contents. Turgonian intelligence might be a military unit but they weren’t stupid and it was rumored that Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest took a direct hand in the game. Well, maybe not. From what little Xenon had said about him, Hollowcrest took the long view on things and had more plots running around than an egg farmer had chickens. He might have some sort of double cross to catch their agent in the works. No, that didn’t fit what she knew. It wouldn’t be like the Turgonians to let something like this lie if they knew about it.

The information hadn’t turned up anywhere else either. Neither the Nurians nor the Kyattese seemed to have it, or if they had it they hadn’t acted upon it. Had Commander Ravencrest turned their agent? Unlikely but possible. Her observations of the agent made her think not but she didn’t have enough information to risk making contact yet just in case. That meant her only real option was to play housemaid and search of answers at the Ravencrest estate.

She’d begin poking around tonight. A week was enough to get a feel for the rhythms of the household. It was also enough time for her to memorize the entire estate layout, identify potential secret rooms and passages and have a decent idea about the peculiarities of the occupants and staff. It wasn’t as detailed an assessment as she would have liked. That would take a month or so of undercover work and her gut feeling was telling her that it didn’t think she had a month. It would be dangerous of course. She would only be able to play the _I’m new here and I got lost_ card once, maybe twice at the most. However, she was good at what she did. The risk level was acceptable. If worse came to worse she had an emergency cache in the woods so she could cut and run if necessary.

Done with stacking the linens she closed the cupboard, grabbed the basket and started toward the servant’s stair. As she rounded the corner a tall, muscular man exited one of the bedroom suites. cracks in the artifice, she thought. She had hoped not to need to deal with this particular lecherous scion of the Ravencrest clan until later in her stint as a maid, if at all. She’d been warned by the house master about Lavin Ravencrest when she arrived. The youngest son of Commander Ravencrest was to all reports a gambler, drunken ner-do-well and all around cad. He kept his propensities under some control around the estate, primarily because his father wouldn’t stand for harassment of the staff. The house master said he had a habit of feeling up any female staff when he thought he could get away it without discovery. Luckily, he only tried to fluster female staff with this behavior rather than engaging in active molestation.

He looked up the hall and smiled as he saw her coming. Well, no way to avoid it now. Analyze the hall for potential opportunities. Hmm, the rug started just a bit from where he was standing. She could trip, careen into him and let him get in a good grope. She could then sputter, apologize, do something clumsily and escape. He’d be left with the impression of a not too bright, somewhat klutzy maid servant. If things went south she could turn enthusiastic and let him think she was interested. String him out, play a little and maybe even seduce the sot. It wouldn’t be hard. She’d dealt with worse before.

Without pausing Katrina shortened her stride and placed her foot just so her toe looked to catch the edge of the carpet. Feigning the trip she aimed herself directly at Lavin. He wasn’t expecting it but he managed to catch her neatly as she fell at him. As expected he managed to place his hands in several inappropriate places as he _helped her recover_ from her trip. She sputtered apologies and moved to grab her basket and escape. Everything was working as expected when he suddenly grabbed her arm and said, “Wait, who are you? Are you new?”

Rats. She had instantly relaxed the arm he’d grabbed so he wouldn’t feel the muscle and wonder why a maid had such well-defined muscular arms. She looked up and answered “Kalina, your lordship and yes I’m the new maid,” using her best nervous voice.

He looked at her for a moment and then let her arm go. “Well then Kalina, I suppose I’ll be seeing more of you around and about” he said with a hint of a leer.

She ducked her head as if hiding a blush and grabbed her basket. “Yes my lord” she replied meekly and scuttled toward the servant’s stair. Would it be too much to give a backward glance? Flustered new maid confronted by lecherous member of the household. A somewhat frightened glance to determine he wasn’t going to chase and continue his fondling was in order so she did so. He was still standing in the hall, looking somewhat speculatively after her.

She analyzed the encounter on the way down the stairs. The _lazy lecherous drunken younger son_ was not at all out of shape. He managed to disguise it well but he had the build and muscles of an active swordsman. She also knew from the way he had caught her that he had very good reflexes. That would make him very fast in a fight. If she had to take him out it would have to be unexpected. Use a knife while distracting him or scratch him with one of the emergency paralytic concoctions she carried maybe? Well, she’d cross that bridge when she got there. Meanwhile it was back to the grind for _Kalina the maid_.


	3. Chapter 3

Sicarius perched in the crotch of a tree observing the Ravencrest estate house as he rested and waited for his opportunity. The last few days since he’d arrived in Port Rochelle had raised more questions and not provided any definitive answers. An after-hours search of Commander Ravencrest’s town house and office at the port had revealed nothing much of interest. He now knew that Ravencrest kept nothing official at the town house, in fact he rarely used it at all, preferring to spend his off time at his estate on the outskirts of town or with his mistress. Despite the difficulties, security at the port itself was relatively high. Even he had some problems getting into the Commander’s port office. He’d concluded that getting anything documentary out would need to be a multiple person inside job if Ravencrest himself wasn’t the leak. Sicarius hadn’t seen any evidence of that sophisticated an operation at the port. So Ravencrest’s mistress and the estate were the only viable possibilities.

The mistress would be a bit difficult since she was a high-end courtesan with lots of social connections and a tight knit effective staff. When it came right down to it most of the members of the oldest profession were security conscious to one degree or another. The rule of thumb was the higher the rank of the clientele the more paranoid the mistress and this lady was no exception. Infiltrating her house would be challenging and take a bit of time to set up. In the interest of efficiency he had, therefore decided to take a look at the estate first.

Casing the estate grounds in retrospect had proved to be a very good decision. If he’d started with the mistress he’d have never caught the Nurian courier. It was too bad that the man had managed to suicide before Sicarius could question him. While he knew that most of the undercover couriers carried a quick terminal exit method, usually cyanide in a tooth, this was the first time he’d seen an implanted capsule. It was presumably triggered by some sort of mental science command since the courier had gasped a word under his breath to trigger it. It would be difficult to stop that method of suicide, Sicarius thought to himself. If he’d known, he could have attempted to cut out the implant before the capsule released the poison. Even then it would have been dicey given its location high on the inside of the courier’s thigh right over the main vein. Removal would have been quite likely futile knowing the Nurian paranoia, he speculated. The capsule itself would have been created with some sort of failsafe such that attempting to remove it would set it off.

While the technical _how_ of the suicide was important the _why_ questions were much more so. Couriers generally didn’t know much, Sicarius mused. They would usually pick up messages from a dead drop and then ferry them, without reading the contents, to their final destination. So why the extra precaution of a low level practitioner courier and an almost unstoppable suicide method? He hadn’t even been carrying much in the way of information. There was a love letter written in semi-literate Kendorian. The thing had more spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors than Sicarius had ever seen in a single document. Even the handwriting was atrocious. The second document was a long list of numbers grouped in sets. That one was neat and precise in a completely different hand than the love letter. If he assumed that both were in code then the latter was key based, most likely a book, and the numbers would indicate words in the book. The first was more likely an idiot code where specific errors indicated that the receiver should use other words in the document to assemble the message. Neither document seemed to warrant the extreme paranoia about capture that the capsule in the messenger implied. That must mean that the courier knew the contact, Sicarius concluded. Even more likely was that the courier was carrying an oral report too. Given where he’d intercepted the courier it was highly probable that the contact was someone on the Ravencrest estate.

Sicarus ran over his information on the estate’s occupants. There was Commander Ravencrest of course. No wife. She’d died of some sort of fever over seven years ago. His eldest son, Preston, was posted at Ft Dretsvar up near the Kendorian border. The younger, Lavin, however, was at the estate and had been for several months. The local rumor was that Lavin had attempted to seduce a daughter of a prominent warrior cast family in Stumps. The family had taken offense and Commander Ravencrest had ordered his profligate son to stay outside Stumps until further notice. Sicarius was curious why he’d come to stay at the estate in Port Rochelle and not in one of the larger cities of the Empire. His research both back in Stumps and locally hadn’t indicated a strong reason for Lavin to rusticate under the watchful eye of his father. The only thing that might make sense was that in Port Rochelle he wouldn’t have to spend as much money to keep up his life style as he would elsewhere. There was a rumor that Lavin tended to be somewhat of a spendthrift and his father periodically threatened to cut his funding. It was possible that the Commander had ordered his younger son home where he could keep him at least somewhat in line.

Other denizens of the estate included a house master, a cook, a variety of household servants as well as guards, stablemen and tenant farmers. He could tentatively eliminate the stablemen and tenant farmers as suspects since they would have no access to the house. The guards also tended to be posted outside the manor house so they would not be high on the priority list. The inside servants were still a possibility. However, the primary candidates for the Nurian spy were Commander Ravencrest himself and his son Lavin. I’ll start looking there, he thought.

Decision made he sat in the tree and indulged in a rare moment of idleness. It would be quite a few hours before the household would be asleep so he had time to kill. Digging around in his small pack he extracted a small box. Opening it he pulled out some paper and some drawing charcoal. Angling himself in the so he could get a good view of the house in the afternoon light he started to draw. Several hours later as the light started to fade he was finished. As he had intended the drawing gave him a good idea of the internal lay out of the mansion. A useful skill drawing, Sicarius thought, and one of the few he’d managed to acquire in spite of Hollowcrest’s carefully designed education regimen.

Hollowcrest had just about had a fit of apoplexy when he discovered the cartography tutor had included architectural drawing as part of the lessons. He had calmed down a bit when he’d been handed the schematic of the secret passages in the west wing of the Imperial Barracks, Sicarius remembered. The fleeting concerned look on Hollowcrest’s face just before he’d tossed it in the fire almost made the extra physical training sessions for _failure to ask permission_ worth it. It was a good thing he never found any of the other sketches before they were burned, Sicarius thought. Those would have earned extra sessions with Major Pike.

Sicarius forced his mind away from that train of memory. The past was just that, past. Now was the time to complete the mission and return so he could continue his plan to protect the empress and her secret. He figured that the pregnancy would be common knowledge by the time he got back. It would be a delicate task to keep Hollowcrest’s attention focused on other things at least until the child was born. He hoped he was up to it. No use over planning at this point, he mused. Plans rarely survive the first confrontation with the enemy anyway. He’d just have to adjust as the situation developed. Sicarius replaced the drawing box in his pack, settled himself in the tree and proceeded to nap until it was time to explore the estate.


	4. Chapter 4

Katerina had spent the last three nights prowling around the mansion searching to see if she could locate anything indicating how or why the dispatches went missing. She’d eliminated most of the servants as suspects with the exception of the house master and the cook. Ravencrest tended to keep his guards in the separate Barracks as opposed to in the manor house itself so she could also eliminate them for now.

She’d cased the library first. The only interesting thing she’d found there was that Commander Ravencrest was the proud owner of several books, written in Nurian, on military strategy. Interesting that the Commander, or someone in the household was literate in Nurian. Judging from the notes in the margins someone, most likely the Commander, had used them for a serious study of Nurian strategy and tactics. She wouldn’t be able to confirm that they were the Commander’s notes until she found a sample of his handwriting to compare. One of the books, however, didn’t have any notes in it. It was also the one that appeared to be most used if you went by the binding and dog eared pages. She knew that the Nurian’s often used page/line number in a specified book as a code. The existence of the unannotated book made her wonder if there was a potential Nurian connection to the missing dispatches.

Last night she’d been lucky. Lavin Ravencrest had spent the night in town and thus she was able to search his rooms. Once again, nothing much out of the ordinary. It was strange however that Lavin’s rooms were a bit too neat and precise. His accounts, what she had seen from the ledger she’d found, were impeccably kept which didn’t jibe with his spendthrift reputation. Those clues in conjunction with her encounter with him in the hall raised her suspicions that Lavin was something more than the _degenerate younger son_ he was pretending to be.

The only other curious thing she’d discovered in her searching was evidence that someone else had been investigating at least some of the rooms before her. The tell-tales were faint and infrequent. A bit of dust in the wrong place here. Something slightly askew there. Nothing that anyone normally would notice. She’d only caught it because she had been in the rooms earlier in the day and she had been trained to spot such differences. She hadn’t heard any movements in her night time forays but that didn’t mean anything. Older houses like this tended to creak and make noise as they settled in the night. She also hadn’t heard about any unexplained windows or other entry points left open overnight from any of the other servants. Still her gut feeling was that someone else was prowling about the estate house in the night.

If someone else was indeed searching like she was they were very good, she concluded. She mentally ran through the list of operatives that she knew could pull something like this off without actively alerting her or leaving clues that the servants would find. Well, there were the two Nurians. One of them, known only as _The Shaman_ , had training in the mental sciences the other was a breaking and entering specialist called Kalao. Either of them could do it. The Kayattese didn’t have anyone on staff that was of sufficient caliber but they could have hired one of the three freelance “artists” from the southern islands. Only one of those agents, however, could pass for a Turgonian without a substantial disguise. She hadn’t seen anyone either in town or on the estate that appeared to be in such a disguise so she could potentially eliminate two of the three freelancers. That made three potential operatives. Whom else? One of the larger Mandagorian tribes had an intelligence group. Their top operative was also a possibility but the traces Katerina had found didn’t feel like Elena’s normal methods of operation. Tentatively scratch her off the list.

Anyone else, she wondered. The Turgonians themselves might be a possibility. Right before she’d left Xenon had told her that the Turgonians had a new high level asset. He, they’d confirmed that it was a he, apparently had run afoul of some political machinations and had been _punished_ in typical brutal Turgonian fashion. According to the information the Turgonians hadn’t killed him but it had been close. Xenon didn’t have much more about him except that he had blond hair, favored knives and was a skilled fighter. Skilled enough to cause the elite units of the Imperial Barracks to attempt to avoid training with him if at all possible. But for the _punishment_ they wouldn’t even have known that much. Maybe he was good enough to pull something like this off.

Placing her musings aside for the moment, she reviewed her plans for tonight’s activities. She’d decided to leave the secret passages and rooms for last. While they had the most potential for information they also posed the most danger. Anyone she encountered in such a place would not be easily avoided. If she was seen or, artifice forbid, caught she’d have to kill someone. That would most likely necessitate either disposing of a body or abandoning her cover here completely. Not something she wanted to do if she could avoid it. No, tonight she’d be attempting to thoroughly search the Commander’s suite as opposed to the quick once over she’d done while cleaning.

In anticipation of tonight’s activities, she’d taken the precaution of putting a little soporific into the commander’s brandy bottle in the Library. He normally had a glass or two in the evenings and this would insure that he slept more soundly than usual. She would check before she headed to the Commander’s suite to make sure he had indeed imbibed as normal. Nothing to do now but wait until the household was quiet and then she could move.

Several hours later found her in the Commander’s sitting room pondering if it was worth the risk to search the bedroom while the Commander was sleeping. Turgoinan military men had the unpleasant habit of sleeping lightly. She made a quick calculation based on the apparent amount of consumption of brandy in the Library. Was that enough sedative to keep him from waking while she was in the room? She decided that it was but she’d need to be careful and make as little noise as possible. She silently went to the bedroom door, opened it and slipped in.

Upon entering the bedroom she immediately realized that something was wrong. The Commander was not breathing. Assassinated, she wondered? She looked around the room. Katerina didn’t see anything out of place. There was no one hiding in the shadows, no one behind the curtains, and most importantly no one up high such as on the top of the armoire. The door to the bathing room was open. She moved to the door and glanced in. No one in there either.

Good, let’s look at the body she thought to herself and moved to the bed. Once there she gently touched the Commander. The body was still slightly warm. Less than an hour, at the most, since he’d died she decided. She leaned over and took a good sniff. Not an obvious poison like prussic acid or arsenic. As she straightened up she caught a flash of movement from the bathing room door. Shards of light I forgot to look up in the bathing room, she thought. Someone must have been up near the ceiling in the entryway. It could even have been done mundanely if the person were tall and strong enough. Stupid, stupid beginner’s mistake she berated herself as she drew a dagger and settled into a knife fighter’s stance.


	5. Chapter 5

This was the third night in a row that Sicarius had infiltrated the Ravencrest estate house. He’d searched all the common areas and many of the empty rooms. Last night he’d even managed to get into Lavin Ravencrest’s suite and search it as the younger son had spent the night in town. He’d located some of the access points to several of the secret passages or rooms that seemed to riddle the estate manor. He had decided not to explore those yet since it would be all too easy to get boxed in and have to fight his way out. So far he’d found absolutely nothing that would indicate if anyone was the leak he sought.

There were some books in Nurian in the library, however, Commander Ravencrest was well known for his studies of historical battles. Sicarius inferred the Commander had been making a study of the Nurian tactical style. Given the cryptic notes in the margins, he’d probably have better luck attempting again to decipher Starcrest’s _Mathematical_ _Probabilities_ _Applied_ _to_ _Military_ _Strategies_ than to try and figure out what exactly the Commander had been after. The location of the books in the library would also make it easy for anyone in the household who was fluent in Nurian to use the books for a page/line number code like he’d found on the courier.

Unfortunately, the only thing really strange so far was a vague feeling that he wasn’t the only person moving around the manor in the night. It was very subtle but occasionally there would be small noises that were not attributable to the normal sounds caused by the building reacting to night time temperature fluctuations. After investigating a couple of the noises and not finding anyone he concluded that if there was indeed someone else moving about the building they were very good.

Tonight would be tricky. He was going to infiltrate Commander Ravencrest’s suite. What he found or didn’t find would determine his course of action. His gut feeling was telling him that he needed to speed up his investigation. Since he’d not found any direct evidence that the Commander was the leak to expedite the matter he intended to wake the Commander at the end of his search and have a little chat with him about the situation. Of course, if the Commander woke up during his search he’d merely have the chat a little earlier than planned.

Sicarius carefully unlatched the bathroom window and entered the suite silently closing the window behind him. He stood still then in the narrow entryway to the bathroom, listening to the ambient sounds of the house. There it was again. One of those little noises that was almost, but not quite, right. But for his extensive training he’d have never noticed. Now where was it coming from? It was not in the bedroom, maybe from the sitting room of the suite? Looking across at the sitting room door he noticed that it was starting to move. Quickly, using the slight sounds of the door’s movement to cover his actions, he managed to wedge himself up near the ceiling with his hands on one side and his feet on the opposite wall of the small entryway to the bathroom. If the entryway had been any wider he wouldn’t have been able to do it. He wouldn’t be able to see who came into the bedroom but if things went right he’d be able to surprise and catch the intruder.

Sicarius listened intently. Someone was moving very quietly in the bedroom. The person was moving almost as quietly as he could. The person paused then moved to the bathroom door and looked in. He could see a faint shadow in the moonlight on the floor. Smaller than he was, about 5’5” and 125 pounds was his quick estimate. They didn’t enter bathroom and more importantly didn’t look up. More, almost imperceptible, sounds of movement. Another pause. Sounds of sniffing?

It was at that point Sicarius realized that something had been missing since he’d entered the bathroom. He hadn’t heard any of the sounds that a person normally made while sleeping. That must mean that Commander Ravencrest wasn’t in the bedroom or, if he was, he was no longer alive. Someone had assassinated the Commander? As quietly as possible he dropped onto the floor while pulling one of his knives.

The figure next to the bed must have incredible peripheral vision because it whirled as he dropped. By the time his feet were set on the floor the person had also drawn a dagger and was in a classic knife fighter’s stance.

Sicarius paused. Yes, his assessment had been correct. About 5 and a half feet tall, slender and, he was surprised to see, clearly female. She was dressed in form fitting black trousers and shirt just as he was. Her hair was up and covered over by some sort of head scarf. Superbly balanced, feet set, she was ready to move in any direction. Despite the fact that she’d been startled by his movement, her breathing was even. Even stranger, it was quickly synchronizing with his own. That was something that only very well trained fighters tended to do so that they could react at the same instant as their opponent.

They stood that way, motionless, for ten or more heartbeats. Judging by her eye movement she was assessing him in the same manner as he had just assessed her. Suddenly she gave a little nod of her head in acknowledgement at him. Huh? In a fight Sicarius would read that gesture as an indication that his opponent was willing to concede. In this situation he wasn’t sure exactly what she meant. When unsure, the best defense was to watch and wait for the situation to develop so he remained still. She looked at him then slowly straightened from her fighting stance and sheathed her dagger. Interesting. She was giving him the advantage. Why he wondered. Then she spoke.

“So you must be the new Turgonian asset. Welcome to the shadow game.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

What!? Sicarius squelched his reaction. She was a spy, presumably of some foreign power. She clearly had some idea of who and what he was. He needed to capture and question her. It was clear she could fight, but she seemed to want to talk instead. Strange. This was beyond anything in his experience. Making a quick decision he sheathed his knife and shifted into a more relaxed stance. There, that might make her more inclined to divulge some additional information.

She noted his movement but did not comment on it. Instead she continued “I estimate he’s been dead less than an hour.” She paused, looking at him presumably to gauge his reaction, “It wasn’t any of the obvious poisons. If I had to guess, without using some light, I’d say suffocation.”

She’d barely finished speaking when the atmosphere in the room changed. The air suddenly felt electrically charged and the hair on the back of his neck started to stand up. It was the same feeling that occurred just before Hollowcrest’s pet shaman would knock him out.

The woman noticed it too. “It’s science!” she hissed at him as she started toward the door to the sitting room at a run. “Move!”

Sicarius jumped for the bathroom door as it was the fastest way out from where he was standing. If it was an effect focused on the room rather than a person he’d be able to avoid it if he got far enough away fast enough. He heard the sitting room door open just as he put his hand on the window latch then everything went black.


	6. Chapter 6

Her arms were stretched out from her sides and held by something, it felt like chains and manacles. She was sitting on the floor with her back against a wall and had a pounding headache as well. As she’d been taught long ago Katarina remained limp and still trying to assess the situation without indicating that she’d regained consciousness. Shards, I hate science stun hangover she thought.

“Well done” a somewhat familiar voice said. “I expected you to catch someone but not two! Any idea what we have caught?”

“A pair of spies my lord.” a voice with a slight Nurian accent answered. “Her, I recognize. She’s a Kendorian operative I’ve run into before.”

The Nurian voice was even more familiar. It was The Shaman. She’d caught him once before a couple years ago. That time he had escaped custody before he could be questioned. What the heck was he doing here and why was the other voice familiar?

“Last I knew she was the new housemaid.” the other voice commented.

Lavin Ravencrest, she thought, the other voice is Lavin Ravencrest.

“Logical,” the Nurian said. “By reputation she’s an infiltration specialist. A chameleon that can blend in most anywhere and be most anyone. She’s also damn good with a knife.”

Nice to know someone thought highly of her skills, she thought.

“What about the young man?” Lavin asked.

“Him, I don’t recognize,” the Nurian answered. “His gear and weapons are Turgonian in make but I would expect that. Any good operative uses local gear on assignment. He looks mostly Turgonian too except for that blond hair. He’s also too young to be any of the elite operatives I know about.”

“Working together?” Lavin speculated. “One on the inside and one on the outside?”

“Possibly but she doesn’t usually work with a partner.” The Nurian’s voice was puzzled. “An apprentice perhaps?” The Shaman speculated but didn’t sound completely convinced.

“We can question them later about it” said Lavin. “We have much to do before my father’s death is discovered and not a lot of time to do it in.”

“They are secure and they should be unconscious for a bit longer” the Nurian said. “It will be safe to leave them here for a while.”

“Good, let’s get on with it.” Lavin’s voice was moving away.

Katerina remained limp until she heard the two moving away. She then waited an additional minute or so before making a couple of slight shifts in position as if she were coming around. There was no response so she cracked open her eyes.

She was surprised that there was dim light in the room. She quickly looked around to familiarize herself with the layout just in case the light was temporary. The room was unremarkable. It appeared to once have been a cell of some sort but the barred door had long since been removed as evidenced by the rusty iron hinges that remained attached to the doorway. The light was coming through that door way from another, presumably larger room and from her vantage point she could just see the corner of a table and a chair but nothing else.

She had already determined that she was bound. Yes, as she had suspected her arms were attached to the wall by chains that ended in metal manacles on her wrists. Her feet weren’t shackled or tied. Just a bit beyond the end of her feet lay the Turgonian agent. In this light she could see that he was quite young, a teenager in fact, with a shock of blond hair trimmed close to his head. She was a little surprised. No teenager should have moves like the few she’d seen him do and that fighting stance was something only years of experience could make look so effortless and natural. He was hog-tied in a position that looked seriously uncomfortable. His hands were shackled behind his back with a rope tether connecting to his tied feet. He was also awake and looking at her.

“You know the shaman?” were his first words. His voice was pitched so it would reach her and not much further.

“Unfortunately both by reputation and personally” Katrina replied just as softly. “We played hide and seek with intermittent bouts of fighting for a couple hours several years ago. He didn’t appreciate being caught by me.”

The young man looked at her, “He escaped.” It wasn’t a question.

“He escaped,” she confirmed. “I would have killed him but orders are orders,” she added. “Since then he apparently has increased his power in the mental sciences. He must have, to knock us both out like that. I suspect he’s also developed some additional nasty and painful tricks to get people to talk. That was his hobby before and I don’t think he would give it up.”

“Hmph” was the young Turgonian’s reply.

Katarina was troubled. The young agent was not reacting either to her or to the situation like she expected. She’d been attempting to form some sort of a bond with him since she’d sheathed her dagger in Commander Ravencrest’s bedroom. The helpful female angle sure wasn’t working. The professional to professional treatment didn’t seem to be having any impact either. Very strange, he didn’t seem to be upset or concerned about being captured, tied and facing who knows what in the way of persuasion to talk. All in all, his responses would have made a granite boulder seem expressive. Katarina’s experience was telling her that neither of them would be making it out alive unless they worked together. But how could she obtain an alliance with this enigmatic young man? For one of the few times in her work as an agent, Katarina was unsure about how to proceed from here. They didn’t have much time before Lavin and the Shaman returned so she’d have to decide on something quickly. She was thinking so hard that she was a bit startled when the Turgonian spoke again.

“I propose a truce” he said.


	7. Chapter 7

Sicarius had regained consciousness in an all too familiar uncomfortable position. Even the post stun headache was familiar. He was lying on his side, arms bound behind his back tethered by a short lead to his bound feet. Only the fact that he’d been in a similar situation many times before in his training enabled him to lay completely still and listen to the conversation occurring somewhere behind his back.

It was a Nurian shaman and Lavin Ravencrest he inferred from the discussion. So I now know the source of the leak, he thought. They were primarily talking about the woman agent. She’s Kendorian, interesting, and they don’t know who I am or my affiliations. That could be both good and bad. He knew that neither Nuria nor Kendoria had much love for the Empire. He wondered if the woman would side with the Nurian shaman given a chance. Would she trade her knowledge about him as a means to get out of this situation?

He took a chance and opened the eye closest to the floor. He couldn’t see much. There was light coming from somewhere behind him. It was just enough to see that the woman was sitting, chained by her hands to the wall, arms outspread. She was still dressed, complete with headscarf though her pants legs were rolled up and her shirt cuffs were loose. They had obviously searched her and removed her weapons. She was to all appearances still out cold. Something in the way her body was positioned, however, told him that she was as awake and aware as he was. Interesting reaction he thought. It implied serious training, experience or both.

The Nurian and Ravencrest finished their conversation and started to move off. He listened carefully until he was sure they were no longer in the area then opened his other eye. The woman shifted slightly in her bonds then went still again. She was listening for a response he decided. She then opened her eyes, did a quick survey of the room then focused on him.

He decided to risk conversation. She’d indicated a willingness to share information up in the bedroom. He should take advantage of that. “You know the shaman?” he whispered.

“Unfortunately both by reputation and personally” she replied in a similar whisper. She paused, considering something, then added, “We played hide and seek with intermittent bouts of fighting for a couple hours several years ago. He didn’t appreciate being caught by me.” Her tone was matter of fact but had a hint of something else. Dislike? No, more like exasperation.

“He escaped,” Sicarius guessed but phrased it as a statement.

“He escaped. I would have killed him but,” she shrugged slightly causing the chains to clink softly “orders are orders.” She continued half to herself and half to him, “Since then he apparently has increased his power in the mental sciences. He must have, to knock us both out like that. I suspect he’s also developed some additional nasty and painful tricks to get people to talk. That was his hobby before and I don’t think he would give it up.”

Well wasn’t that interesting. She clearly doesn’t like the Nurian shaman, he thought. She wouldn’t trust him given their shared history. That made the potential for her trading information for freedom, he calculated, quite a bit less likely.

He took a good look at her. While she’d been talking her face and body language had mirrored what she was saying. Now that she was thinking every movement, every emotion was damped to the point of nonexistence. She could have been a rock for all the emotion she was showing right now. Sicarius thought about what the Nurian shaman had said. She was a chameleon and able to fit in anywhere. That, by definition, meant that she had excellent control and acting skills. So was this an act meant to trap him? Regardless, he’d have to do something quickly. Lavin and the Nurian could be back at any time. Neither one of them was going to get out of this without the other’s cooperation. He’d take a chance then. “I propose a truce.”

“Truce?” she echoed flatly.

“Combine efforts until we get out of here, then we can negotiate further.”

“If we have the opportunity” she countered. “The Shaman may be able to track us regardless of how well we hide.”

“Humph,” he grunted in agreement. That was interesting choice of language, he thought. She was using we and us. She must have already come to the same conclusion about the need for cooperation that he had.

“Truce then” she said and started moving around. It looked like she was attempting to contort her body so she could get her head near her hand. She obviously had something hidden in either her hair or her head scarf. After a bit of shifting around, stretching and straining it became clear she couldn’t reach whatever it was. She exhaled and relaxed. “Can you get clear?”

In response he rolled over so his back was to her. “Is the tether to my feet rope?” he asked.

“Yes” she replied, “but it’s threaded under your belt so getting to the knot is going to be difficult.”

Sicarius didn’t reply but instead arched his back and attempted to get a hand onto his right boot heel. He could get his fingers on it but the angle was wrong for him to pry the holdout blade from the heel. He relaxed. That wasn’t going to work.

“Roll over again and see if you can get your heels up on the wall near my hand,” she suggested. It was clear that she’d figured out from his question and contortions that he had a hidden blade.

He complied as she shifted again to get her hand as low as possible. He felt her touch his foot. “Right boot heel, inside edge near the arch,” He directed as he felt her fumbling around.

A short time later she said “Got it,” and he felt her use the knife to cut the rope tether near his feet.

The relief was excruciating as the blood rushed back into his feet but he ignored it in favor of working his shackled hands under his backside. With a bit of effort, he managed to do so and sat for a moment panting slightly.

She was assessing him speculatively. “How good are you at picking locks or do I need to dislocate one of my thumbs?” she asked in a conversational manner.

Judging from the way she had suggested it, she was perfectly willing and able to do so. In fact, she probably had done something similar before he decided. “Where’s the pick?” he asked as he proceeded to free his feet.

“In my hair” she replied.

It only took a moment for him to stand up, move over to her and extract the lock picks from her hair. They were somewhat unique in that they were part hair pin as well as lock pick. He supposed they were designed that way so that they would not fall out. Clever.

Since time was a factor he started in on her manacles. He could get a better angle to work on them than if he’d tried to get the shackles off his hands first. Sicarius wasn’t sure he trusted her so he kept an eye on his knife that she still held. As the second manacle came off he moved back out of reach of the blade.

She eyed him and stretched her shoulders, working the stiffness out before she stood up. “As bad as porcupines making love” she muttered under her breath. Standing she offered him his boot knife, hilt first, and said “Trade you” holding out her hand for the lock picks.


	8. Chapter 8

The young Turgonian was flexible, strong, and decent at picking locks. He was also very skittish Katerina noted. He did the knife hand manacle second and moved quickly out of range when it came off. She remembered the old joke about agents working together being as bad as porcupines making love. He shot her a look. Had she said that out loud? I must be overdoing the we are in this together bit to make a slip like that. Back off girl, ratchet it back or you’ll blow it, she thought. To cover her gaff she flipped the boot knife around and offered it to him handle first. “Trade you.”

He grabbed the knife and dropped the picks into her hand. She immediately went to work on his shackles. She could tell by his stance that he was keeping an eye on the other room and listening intently for any indication that Lavin and The Shaman were returning. She noticed as she worked that his contortions to work his arms around to the front had tightened the shackles to the point they had cut into his skin. With a soft click the lock opened and she realized that she’d need to press in on each band to get them to release enough to allow removal. Given how tight the shackles were already that was going to hurt, a lot. It was probably not a good idea to startle him by just doing it, she thought. “There’s a latch. I have to push these tighter to make them release” she whispered.

“Do it” came his low reply.

She did, and felt him stiffen momentarily in an involuntary response to the pain as the shackles released. She was impressed. That involuntary response had been the only indication he’d made that getting them off had cut even more deeply into his already lacerated wrists. She looped the blood smeared shackles through her belt.

As soon as his hands were free he moved to the doorway. Katrina hesitated for a moment, best not to let him get too far ahead; she didn’t trust him that much. She moved up behind him, careful to make enough noise so he would be aware where she was but not enough to alert any potential occupant of the other room. Together they peered around the door jam. Nothing in the next room except a chair and a table with a small light globe perched on a candlestick and a pile of weapons. There was also a dark opening in the opposite wall.

The Turgonian moved into the room his attention on the dark opening. Once he reached the table he began economically replacing his weapons in their various sheathes about his person. Katerina watched with professional detachment. He was sorting the weapons by touch and replacing them without looking. That meant this was his normal collection of armament. He was obviously not a deep cover infiltration specialist like she was. Her type of operation tended to use whatever weapons were available and fit with the character she was portraying. He was more the assassin type of agent she concluded.

As he finished rearming she noticed that he’d left a bloody smear on the table top. Not good. She made a soft clicking noise to catch his attention and stared pointedly at the smear. He cocked his head slightly questioning her. I must be learning to read him, she thought, or he’s letting more expressions show. He didn’t understand her concern. Blasted Turgonian ignorance about the sciences. She’d have to explain.

She frowned at him, took off her head scarf and quickly cut two strips from it with one of her knives from the table. She intentionally put the knife back down and carefully approached him. One of his eyebrows rose slightly as she did so. He was curious, not threatened. That was reassuring. It meant she was not likely to get attacked when she got within arm’s reach. As she got close she whispered “When a shaman specializes in blood and pain it’s not good to give him material to work with” and pointedly looked at his lacerated wrists.

“Humph” was the reply but he held out his hands, one at a time so she could bandage his wrists.

That task complete she used the remainder of the scarf to wipe up the smear and as an afterthought tied it around the shackles hanging on her belt so they wouldn’t clink together when she moved. Only then did she rearm herself.

Once armed she looked at the light globe considering. It seemed to be standard Nurian issue. Why would The Shaman bring such a thing into Turgonia? You might as well put up a big sign _Nurian connection here_. Well, she mused, that just might be the point since the science was officially illegal in Turgonia. Give Lavin a few useful gee-gaws to play with and use them as blackmail material to keep him in line. Whatever, nothing to stop her from using the plum sized sphere as a light source. She grabbed it.

In the meantime the young Turgonian had moved over to the opening and was looking down the passage that went in both directions. He hadn’t seemed to come to a conclusion yet about which way to go. Given what she knew about secret passages and hidden rooms it was going to be a crap shoot either way. Ah well, it was her turn to lead she thought so she squeezed by him, picked a direction at random and moved into the passage.


	9. Chapter 9

The Kendorian woman was a real puzzle, he thought as he held out his wrists one at a time for her to bandage. He took a good look at her as she did so. She seemed to be in her mid-twenties, brown hair with what could only be described as a forgettable face. All in all the visible impression was average. That first impression was completely belied by her posture at the moment. Even concentrating on wrapping his wrists it was clear to him that she was alert and ready to move or fight if necessary.

Sicarius had never run into anyone like this before. She had exquisite control of her body language. If she were playing a part there would be minimal clues to tell if she was being truthful or lying through her teeth. He’d always been told in his training that not reacting was the best way to confuse an opponent. He was beginning to suspect that playing a part so completely, as this woman appeared to be able to do, was another. It was curious, however, that she was letting him see her switch from giving cues as to what she was thinking to a mostly unreadable deadpan. He didn’t think it was accidental, not with what he’d observed of her behavior so far. She must have a reason.

She was also very observant. He’d realized that his wrists would need attention even before he’d left a bloody fingerprint on the table. Completely rearming at that point was the higher priority. He would have taken care of the issue but the Kendorian agent had noticed and offered first. Sicarius found her little lecture about science practitioner’s and bodily fluids interesting. Clearly she was making some assumptions based upon his age and affiliations. Let her think he was ignorant. It might give him an edge if she tried something science based on him.

There. She was done with his wrists. He rotated them a bit. Exactly right. Tight enough to stop the bleeding, not tight enough to hinder movement.

He watched her wipe the table and wrap the remnants of her head scarf around the shackles. Sicarius made a mental note to take those away from her at some point. Now back to the task at hand, he thought. He paced over to the entranceway and looked both ways. Hmmm. No dust. No real way to tell which way the Shaman and Lavin had gone.

The light shifted a bit and Sicarius heard the Kendorian moving up behind him. Once again she was making a slight amount of noise. He knew she could move as silently as he could so she must be doing that intentionally. That implied that she thought highly of his fighting skills and didn’t want to inadvertently startle him into some sort of precipitous action. He was slightly amused by this. She was indeed treating the situation as if the two of them were an amorous pair of porcupines.

She was holding the small light source that had been on the candlestick, cupping it in her hand so that it gave off barely enough light to see. She moved around him, then picked a direction and started off down the passage. He wondered if she had seen something he hadn’t or if she’d just guessed at random. He had the suspicion it was more likely the latter than the former. Regardless of which of the two it was he followed.

Several minutes later she came to a stop. She then did something with the light in her hand and it went out. “Ladder,” she commented softly and from the faint sounds he could hear, commenced to climb it.

He waited at the bottom, slightly out of the way in case she had to drop suddenly. There were more soft sounds of movement some ways above him then a whispered “clear” carried down the shaft.

Sicarius climbed up the ladder and into what looked like a tack room in the stables. Faint moonlight came in through a window high in one wall. Logical, he thought. The Turgonian warrior cast was notoriously paranoid, and with good reason. There were more examples of one high ranking family attempting to take out another in the history of the Empire than could be counted. Thus, any set of secret passages would have at least one exit leading to a means of transportation.

The Kendorian agent was already at the door listening for sounds. After a moment she turned and faced him. “What’s your next objective?” she asked bluntly.

Obviously she considered this to be out and thus was opening negotiations. “Ravencrest and The Shaman” he replied just as bluntly.

“Kill or capture?” she queried. Then, before he could reply, she said “Ah, kill then” apparently reading the answer in his face or body language.

Emperor’s nuts, he thought. He didn’t think he’d given any clues or had she just guessed? This woman was very dangerous if she was picking up cues from him despite his training.

“I’m more interested in The Shaman,” she continued. “Given the fact that we both are here, I suspect he’s been manipulating both sides of the equation against his middle ground.”

That was a strange way to phrase things, Sicarius thought. It made him consider the love letter he’d found in the possession of the Nurian courier in a somewhat different light. She was Kendorian according to the shaman. What if that was actually one of this woman’s reports that had been purloined by the Nurian agent. He decided to take a chance.

“By running off with semi-illiterate love letters perhaps?”

There it was. A slight, almost imperceptible, start that she quickly suppressed. He’d managed to surprise her. Hmm. It most likely was her correspondence then.

Ignoring his last statement she asked “You interested in a further bit of cooperation?”

“Offer a proposition” he said in reply.

“Back into the house, locate the two targets, eliminate them, escape and then go our separate ways” She countered.

Sicarius considered. It would be easier and quicker to eliminate both Ravencrest and the shaman with an additional trained person. His duty, however, would require that he capture this agent and question her in addition to plugging the leak. Of course she would know this and probably attempt to take him out. He had a sudden insight then. From the start in the bedroom she’d been treating him as a respected colleague. The, what did she call it, shadow game, equivalent of the honorable opponent. The _friend across the field of battle_ concept. He’d read about this in the military histories but had never considered that it might apply to agents in service to different powers. The implications stunned him. How often did this sort of thing happen he wondered? If the occurrence percentages in the military histories held the same across into the espionage world, more often than one might think he concluded.

It seemed like this was the sort of relationship she was proposing. In fact, it would be consistent with the way she’d been treating him since they’d first met. It would also explain why she was letting him see the cold calculating agent behind the facade. So the question remaining was exactly how far he could trust her. He made his decision.

“I can only give you a head start afterword,” he stated flatly, tacitly agreeing to the deal she proposed.

“Understood,” she replied. “An hour or two should suffice.” She held out her hand, apparently for him to shake on the deal, and said “I’m Katrina.”

Feeling a bit strange he shook her extended hand and said “Sicarius.”


	10. Chapter 10

Katrina watched the young Turgonian carefully. She knew there were really only two possible results when elite agents came into contact with each other in the shadow game. They would be either directly opposed or not. If opposed, then conflict would ensue and usually someone would end up dead. If not, then professional courtesy was usually the order of the day. That was the nature of the shadow game. In this case she and The Shaman were directly opposed. It was clear that the Nurians had been stealing her local agent’s dispatches. It was also obvious from The Shaman’s association with Lavan Ravencrest that he’d been stealing secrets from the Turgonians at the same time. That put her position visa-vie the young Turgonian clearly in the not opposed category. Given the normal rules of the game it made her offer of cooperation almost a foregone conclusion.

Unfortunately given his age, this was probably the first time the Turgonian had ever been in such a situation. She wasn’t sure how he’d react to the offer. Artificer’s balls, she thought, the young man was difficult to read. She could see he was considering it by the way he hesitated even if he gave no overt clues about what he was thinking. There. He’d figured it out, the slight widening of the eyes as he looked at her gave it away. Welcome to the shadows, she thought, where everything, even duty and loyalty to king and country, was one shade or another of gray.

“I can only give you a head start afterword” he said.

It was her turn to be surprised. She hadn’t really expected him to state it so bluntly. Well, it was his first time in this type of situation. Couldn’t fault him for wanting specific clarification of the terms. “Understood, an hour or two should suffice” she replied. Hmm, she thought. He’d probably need a bit more reassurance of the deal than just a verbal acknowledgement. She stuck out her hand “I’m Katrina” she said formally.

“Sicarius” he replied shaking her hand after a slight pause.

She cocked her head at him and asked “Suggestions?” Katrina was perfectly willing to let him take the lead at this point since he’d have a better gage on when Commander Ravencrest’s death would likely be discovered and the household response after it was. In addition, he might have an idea of what Lavin Ravencrest’s next move might be.

He considered for a moment. “The Commander’s room. If they are not there we can hide the body.”

Yes, she thought, hiding the body would put a kink in the plans. Knowing how The Shaman usually worked she could guess at the plan. Set up the rooms to look like the Commander had been assassinated by one or both of them. Start an assassin hunt and use the resulting confusion to abscond with whatever information they could get their hands on. Producing dead assassins would be a nice touch but not necessary. Lavin would be left as the agent in place ready to funnel anything else that might come his way into the Nurian’s hands. He might even be able to use the Commander’s death to work his way into some position of power. A sweet set up.

Now, she continued to think quickly, how to hide the body? It would be stiff and given the Turgonian culture she didn’t think Sicarius would agree to cut it up. Not to mention the time involved and the mess dismembering a body would engender. No, that wouldn’t work. “Chimney?” she asked.

“Possible,” was the quick reply.

She glanced at the window high in the tack room wall. Judging from the moonlight it was less than an hour to first light. The servants and the troops would be up and moving soon thereafter.

Sicarius had caught her look at the window and he followed her glance. “We don’t have much time,” he said echoing her thoughts.

“Let’s move then,” she stated as she turned to the tack room door. “Kitchen should be empty at this hour,” she continued.

“Go” he agreed softly.

Katrina opened the door carefully and moved out into the stable proper. Sicarius then quickly moved around her to take point and open the stable door. They continued the pattern of leading in turn from one piece of cover to the other all the way to the kitchen door.

Wow, Katrina thought as she watched him move ahead of her. This young man is not quite into his full growth. He’s this good now. What’s he going to be like when he reaches his full potential? If at all possible she needed to get back to Xenon with her observations. This Sicarius could be, would be, a highly dangerous opponent in the future. In the present though, she noted, he wasn’t bad on the eyes and the way he glided across the grass was downright sensual. Mmmm. Katrina wrenched her mind back to the business at hand. Time enough for that later, if there is a later, she thought.

He paused at the kitchen door, listening. Then he tried the handle. It was still unlocked. Katrina smiled to herself. When she was working a job from the inside she always left at least one way back into the building just in case she had to make a precipitous exit from somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. That way she had at least a chance of getting back to her cover identity’s proper location if she wanted or needed to.

Before he opened the door she moved up behind him and whispered “The library window is also unlatched.”

He gave a short nod of understanding and quietly opened the door.

Once inside Katrina took the lead. She’d had a better chance while playing maid to understand the entire interior layout of the manor house. She led him quickly and quietly upstairs to the Commander’s suite.

At the door she felt Sicarius move up behind her. They both listened. It sounded as if someone, maybe two people, were moving about in the room. Sicarius touched her arm and led her further down the hallway to the next room. She knew this was one of the empty bedrooms on this floor so she followed him in without hesitation. He closed the door and crossed the room to its window. Ah, he’d decided on entry through the bathing room window again she concluded. A good choice because the sitting room sitting room of the Commander’s suite appeared to be occupied. He was looking for the element of surprise.

“Wait” she whispered before he could open the window. Before things progressed any further, she thought, they’d better have at least a rudimentary plan of action. Even though he was skilled it was clear, at least to her, that Sicarius had not had much training working with someone else.

He stopped moving and looked at her.

“I’ll take The Shaman” she explained. “I’ll have to move fast, get in close and break his concentration to keep him from doing any science.”

“While I keep Ravencrest and anyone else out of the fight?” he asked.

“What you do with Lavin Ravencrest is up to you” she replied. “But if I go down you’ll only have thirty or so heartbeats before The Shaman will be able to throw something nasty at you.”

“Understood” was his only response as he turned back to open the window.


	11. Chapter 11

Sicarius swung the window open. Thirty heart beats wasn’t a long time. He hoped Katrina could hold her own against the Nurian shaman at least until he killed Lavin Ravencrest. There was likely going to be no real alternative given the situation they were heading into. His research had indicated that Ravencrest was an expert with the sword. He was fast and had a tendency to fight dirty according to all the reports. He would definitely use all the tricks he had at his disposal when faced with an obvious assassin. Sicarius didn’t think he could incapacitate and secure Ravencrest fast enough to avoid whatever the shaman could produce if Katrina went down. If Ravencrest was in the room it would be better just to kill him. Much as Hollowcrest liked having an accurate damage assessment, he would just have to deal with not having it this time. Sicarius might even be able to use that potential frustration to serve his own purposes. He’d have to think on that more later he decided.

Decision made he carefully edged his way along the ledge to the bathroom window. He could almost hear one of his many trainers, _you shouldn’t use the same tactics twice in a row_ the man had said. _Unless it has a good chance of succeeding_ , Sicarius mentally replied then concentrated on getting into the bathroom without being seen or heard.

Once they were both in, Katrina was right on his heels as he maneuvered to the bathroom door. They were lucky. Whoever was in the suite was still in the sitting room rather than in the bedroom. The door between the two was half open and they could see dim light and moving shadows beyond. There were distinct sounds of movement as if someone was searching but not being too careful about leaving things as they were.

The Commander’s body lying uncovered on the bed and Sicarius could see someone had driven a dagger into his chest. Sloppy, as if any assassin would leave evidence like that, he thought. Then realization dawned. They were setting the scene. The Commander’s body would be moved to look as if he’d surprised a known agent in the act of searching the sitting room and was killed. Then, with the addition of either Katrina or his body in the room, Lavin would swear that he’d surprised and killed the assassin in the process of escaping. Now that he thought about it Katrina’s body was more likely. She, after all, was the known agent. He, as the unknown, would be kept for questioning. It would have been a tight plan but for the fact that they had escaped.

He took a quick glance at Katrina. She pointed at him and mouthed “Door”.

He nodded. He’d open the door completely and she’d rush the Nurian. It made sense. The Nurian was the more immediately dangerous of the two since, if given the opportunity, he could simply knock them out again. That settled, the two of them ghosted toward the half open sitting room door. They had managed to get only halfway across the room when the Nurian shaman pushed open the door.

Sicarius had realized Katrina was fast when he’d surprised her earlier and her actions now were just as fast. She went from slow quiet movement to an all-out full speed rush at the shaman in less than a heartbeat. She hit the shaman with her shoulder in the center of his mass knocking him out of the doorway back into the sitting room.

As soon as she’d cleared the door, Sicarius followed. As he ran at the doorway he spotted Lavin Ravencrest standing in the middle of sitting room sword in hand poised and ready. Emperor’s warts, he must have had the sword unsheathed.

Sicarius altered his rush, planted one foot firmly on the door frame and pushed off throwing himself into a shoulder roll drawing his dagger as he rolled. Ravencrest had moved to intercept his original trajectory and looked a little surprised that Sicarius wasn’t impaled by his sword thrust. Ravencrest recovered quickly, turned and took an inelegant swipe at Sicarius’ new position. Of course Sicarius wasn’t there. He’d used the momentum of the roll to carry him to his feet and immediately moved sideways out of the way of the thrust.

The reports had been correct, Sicarus noted. Ravencrest was fast and handled the sword well. What they hadn’t said, Sicarius realized as he dodged a chair that Ravencrest kicked into his path, was that he had some experience in close quarters fighting. He made another dodge using the dagger to parry Ravencrest’s blade. The weapons scraped along each other with a ringing sound. That engagement told him that Ravencrest was stronger than he was. Sicarius realized he would have to get close to neutralize the reach advantage of the sword. Not an advisable option given the strength differential. It looked like his best move would be to risk throwing a dagger. Tricky, it would have to be an eye shot, Sicarius thought as he dodged a cut at his legs. He needed a pause. A momentary hesitation on Ravencrest’s part that would give him an opening to take the throw.

Maybe he could get Ravencrest to over commit on a thrust to give an opening. Sicarius kicked the chair back at him. Ravencrest dodged without stopping his attack. Nope, he was just too good. Sicarius feinted with the dagger using the motion to disguise unsheathing a throwing knife with his off hand. Wait for it. There would be an opening eventually.

Suddenly there was a loud thud and a choked off cry that, to Sicarius’ ears, signified that one of the other two combatants in the room was no longer living. It also distracted Ravencrest just enough so that Sicarius could throw. Ravencrest went down in a heap, Sicarius’ knife protruding from his eye socket.

Sicarius whirled and pulled his second throwing dagger. If the shaman had survived he’d need to distract him immediately before he could concentrate. He quickly noted that there were two pair of feet sticking out from behind the desk. Neither set were moving. He had a little time then. He retrieved his throwing dagger from Ravencrest’s body. Then he cautiously approached the desk. Mutual kill or someone playing dead he wondered.

Katrina was lying limply on top of the Nurian shaman. He was clearly dead. From the damage it looked like she’d managed to shatter his nose with the dagger pommel. She’d placed it perfectly with enough force to kill him instantly. That accounted for the cry and meant the thump had been Katrina hitting the desk. He rolled her body off the shaman and checked for a pulse. Amazing, she was still alive. He took the opportunity to remove the bloody shackles from her belt. Now what, he thought. Try and revive her?

“Ohhh” Katrina groaned. That was followed shortly thereafter by a litany of Kendorian profanity that taxed his linguistic skills and made him wonder if some of the described activities were even possible. Well that makes things a bit easier.


	12. Chapter 12

As soon as Katrina saw the Shaman in the doorway she charged. She couldn’t give him a chance to concentrate or trigger an artifact. To heck with anything fancy she just barreled into him attempting to knock him down and away from the doorway. Her shoulder hit him in the stomach and they tumbled together into the sitting room. As they rolled she caught a glimpse of Lavin Ravencrest grabbing his sword of the table. Well, there was nothing she could do about that right now. She’d just have to trust that Sicarius could take Ravencrest. Otherwise, her tussle with The Shaman would most likely be abruptly terminated by that sword.

During the roll she held on with one hand and attempted to punch with the other. Blocked. He went for her eyes. She head butted him in the face. The fight quickly deteriorated into a rolling grappling match full of knee strikes, elbow jabs, punches, and kicks some connecting others blocked. Grappling was not generally the preferred mode of combat when you were the physically smaller, weaker of the pair but Katrina had no choice. She didn’t know how much better The Shaman had become with the mental sciences over the last two years. Presumably quite a bit. She had to keep disrupting his concentration and that meant close and dirty fighting. Whatever she did she couldn’t let him go.

She heard a sound of metal ringing on metal. Good, that meant Sicarius was still fighting Ravencrest. Another few moments with no sword between the shoulder blades for her.

The rolling punching match continued. She ended up with her back hitting something large and immobile. The wall? No the desk. Katrina attempted a groin shot. He tried a kidney punch. Neither strike was very effective. Suddenly The Shaman managed to get a good grip on her hair with one hand. She felt his muscles bunch in preparation for slamming her head into the desk. That left one of her hands free. As he started the motion she flipped the knife out of her wrist sheath and slammed the pommel into his nose just as he bashed her head hard into the side of desk. The Shaman went limp. Katrina saw stars.

“Ohhh” she heard a groan. Was the bastard still alive? No it was her own groaning she concluded. She lay still for a moment eyes closed. She was on her back. She didn’t think she’d been on her back when the Shaman had slammed her head into the desk. Huh? She didn’t hear any other noise. Mutual kill or Sicarius had won she decided. Lavin wouldn’t move quietly enough so she wouldn’t hear him and if it was Lavin she’d most likely have a sword stuck through her. Damn her head hurt. She started swearing softly under her breath to distract herself.

Katrina opened her eyes to find Sicarius on one knee beside her. “What?” she hissed as she sat up.

“We need to move, the household is alerted,” he replied in Kendorian.

Katrina suddenly realized that she’d been speaking and swearing in her native language and that Sicarius had understood her. She couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. At the same time she noticed that her eyes were also not focusing quite right. Pox and pestilence, I don’t have time to deal with a concussion right now, she thought. “Right,” she replied, still using Kendorian and carefully stood up.

“There should be an escape route from this suite,” Sicarius commented taking a look around the room. “Most likely from the bedroom.”

“Right,” she said again distractedly and started moving toward the bedroom door.

Sicarius give her one of his looks and followed.

Katrina knew where the access point had to be. It was somewhere in that entryway to the bathing room. She ran her hands along the molding that topped the wainscoting hoping to feel what she couldn’t see. Very faintly she could hear sounds of yelling and doors banging elsewhere in the mansion. She ignored them searching for the latch or trigger that she knew had to be there.

Sicarius moved up behind her, then reached around and pushed on one of the wainscoting boards just below where she was searching. He held that board and then reached with his other hand to push a similar board on the other side. There was a click and a section of the wainscoting slid down revealing a shaft descending into darkness. “Go,” he whispered.

She went, feeling around for the ladder she descended as fast as she dared. When she reached the bottom she realized that Sicarius was not behind her. She stopped next to the ladder, listened and waited. In a minute or so there was a faint click followed by a scrape from far up the shaft followed by the sounds of someone coming down at speed. He landed lightly beside her.

“Barricaded the bedroom door and opened the bathroom window,” he said by way of explanation. He brushed past her. As he did so, to her complete surprise, he grabbed her hand and said simply “Come.”


	13. Chapter 13

Sicarius was surprised Katrina was still moving and was relatively copacetic. From what he could see she had been quite battered by that rolling tumbling bout with the Nurian. Given how loud the thunk of her head hitting the desk had been, she most likely had a concussion. It was interesting that her movement and other mannerisms were becoming surer by the moment. In fact the only real evidence that she might not be all there was that she hadn’t appeared to notice that they’d switched to speaking exclusively Kendorian.

Once she had got onto her feet she had made a beeline to the bathroom entryway and started to search for the access to the hidden exit that they both knew had to be there. Looking over her shoulder at the wainscoting he spotted a board that was slightly out of line. Glancing left he spotted a similar board some three feet away. Sicarius figured that she would find it eventually but to save time he reached around her and pushed on one board. It moved slightly with a click as a latch released. Holding it down he repeated the same motion on the other board and a whole panel of the wall slid down revealing a shaft with a ladder.

“Go” he whispered still speaking Kendorian.

She started down the ladder. Sicarius listened for a moment. Yes, the servants were investigating the sounds of the fight. If they were smart and well trained there might even be a guard or two with them. Need to slow them down a bit, he thought, as he moved a trunk that was at the end of the Commander’s bed and wedged it across the bedroom door. He then dashed into the bathroom and opened the window wide. With any luck they will think the culprits went out the window.

Quickly he moved to the secret exit. He closed the access panel behind him making sure it was securely latched. As his fingers brushed the latch he realized that there was even a mechanism to lock the panel from this side. He engaged it. That would result in more delay if any of the servants happened to know about the secret passage.

He then went down the ladder in a controlled fall using his feet on the sides and his hands on the rungs. It was quite a ways down. When he landed lightly at the bottom of the shaft Sicarius estimated that he was well below ground level, maybe even lower than the mansion’s basement.

Sicarius felt Katrina standing near the ladder waiting for him. “Barricaded the bedroom door and opened the bathroom window,” he whispered in explanation of his delay. Getting no immediate response he grabbed her hand and said “come.”

Sicarius tugged her hand slightly to get her moving. It was dark and he carefully felt his way along the wall of the passageway with his free hand. It wouldn’t do to run headlong into a trap or other obstacle, he thought.

A small time later he felt Katrina squeeze his hand and pulled at him to stop. Curious, Sicarius complied. She was fumbling something out of her pocket. Suddenly there was light. She’d found the little light globe she’d snitched from the table and reactivated it. She looked at him ruefully as she handed it over. “Put your thumb on the top to turn it on and off” she said still speaking Kendorian.

He paused and took a good look at her in the light. The pupils of her eyes were the same size. That was good but she had the start of a rather spectacular bruise on the side of her face. A mild concussion he deduced.

“That bad huh?” she asked, apparently reading something in his expression.

“Seen worse,” he replied not bothering to tell her that the times he’d seen worse had been looking in a mirror after a particularly intense training exercise designed to teach him how to fight with an injury. “Come” he said again to her and started off down the passage at a trot expecting Katrina to follow. After a short pause she did.

The passage was quite old and appeared to have been constructed in stages. There were places where it had stone walls, others where the walls were brick. There were even a few places where the walls were bare earth and had been shored up with timbers and wood. All in all a well maintained escape tunnel that appeared to be separate from the other secret passages in the manor house. Sicarius speculated that there must be some event in the Ravencrest family history which had prompted the building of a completely separate method of exit for the head of the family. He also wondered what had prompted Commander Ravencrest and his ancestors to keep it in such good repair over the years.

They trotted down the passage for at least a quarter mile before it ended in a stone wall. Sicarius calculated that they were somewhere near the edge of the woods. He thought for a moment, remembering the layout of the estate. If he had judged the distance and direction correctly this was the foundation wall of that little stone gazebo that sat right next to the wall encircling the manor house grounds. He looked at the wall closely. There should be some method to exit the tunnel on that wall but it wasn’t obvious.

Katrina made a sound that was a cross between a stifled laugh and a snort. He turned and looked at her. She had a look on her face that was somewhat embarrassed and partly amused. She didn’t say anything, merely pointed up at the ceiling. He looked up and there it was. A trap door complete with what looked like a pull down stairway to access it. The whole contraption was hidden in a niche in the ceiling so it wasn’t visible unless one was directly underneath it. Clever. There didn’t appear to be a pull rope so Sicarius jumped and grabbed the end of the stairway using his weight to pull it down. It unfolded silently indicating that it was well oiled. Commander Ravencrest must have used this passage at least semi-frequently to keep its mechanism in such good repair.

Once the staircase was down Sicarius moved up to the trap door. There didn’t appear to be anyone on the other side so he cracked it open slightly. It led to an empty stone room with a wooden door in one wall. Entering the room, Sicarius decided to take a look at the door. As he had expected it was locked. He heard Katrina come up the stair, close the trap door and move closer. He glanced at her and found she had extracted the lock picks from her hair and was holding them out for him. Sicarius accepted the picks then turned and started working on the lock.


	14. Chapter 14

Katrina watched as Sicarius jumped for the end of the fold down staircase that covered the trap door. It was nice to know that someone else as well trained as she was forgot to look up occasionally. His weight pulled it down without a sound. Well that explained how Commander Ravencrest had managed to see his mistress on nights that he was officially at his estate. That little detail had been one of the inconsistencies that had made her suspect her agent in town may have been turned. So it actually had a mundane explanation after all, she mused. It wasn’t the agent’s fault that Commander Ravencrest had been canny and careful enough to disguise exactly how often he was seeing his mistress.

Once the staircase was down it only took a moment to ascertain that there was no one on the other side of the trap door and they emerged into a small stone room with a door in one wall. Katrina watched as Sicarius moved to the door and carefully tried it. It was clear from his reaction that the door was locked. Without saying anything she pulled her lock picks from her hair, moved up next to him and offered them to him. He grabbed them and went to work on the lock. It didn’t take him long to pick it.

The door opened on the outside of the manor house wall with only several hundred feet of open area before the woods started. The sky was pale and it looked like it was only a few minutes before the sun would peak above the horizon. In the early morning twilight Katrina recognized the area where they had emerged. In fact, her emergency pack was not very far away. She’d actually picked this area to stash the pack because it not only had the shortest distance between the estate house and the wall but also had the shortest distance between the wall and the cover of the trees. She’d wondered at the time if the distances had been just a fluke of topography or intentional. She now put it down in the _intentional_ category. A direct result of the upper crust Turgonian paranoia she thought.

Katrina decided that she needed her pack. She was still feeling the effects of the head slam into the desk and the pack contained some things that would help. It would also be a lot easier to shake Sicarius when he gave her the promised _head start_ if she had it.

Sicarius was still standing in the doorway, listening carefully to the sounds of the morning. Faintly, over the birds chirping one could hear shouting in the distance. Yep, the hunt was on or would be shortly. Sicarius looked over at her and remarked “Time to go.” He then took off at a sprint for the edge of the woods.

Katrina sprinted after him. Shards the young man was fast. She had to really push to keep up. Luckily he paused once they were under cover of the woods and out of sight of the wall. When she came up next to him she nodded and motioned with her head for him to follow her. He complied as she took off at a more sedate trot.

Several minutes later they arrived at the dead tree where she’d stashed her pack. She extracted it from its hiding place and rummaged around in it. First things first, she thought, as she grabbed a couple of high energy bars. They were made out of honey, fruit, oats and some sort of protein. The departmental rumor was that you really didn’t want to ask about the protein source but Katrina knew that it was simply a bean paste. She unwrapped one, took a bite just to show Sicarius that they were not poisoned, and tossed him the rest.

He caught it and looked at it curiously.

“Fruit, honey and protein,” she remarked as she unwrapped the other one and started to eat it.

He sniffed it, tentatively took a bite, chewed then asked “chick beans?”

Oohh. A refined sense of taste too. “Yes” she replied through a mouthful of her own and continued to rummage in her pack.

“Animal organ meat would provide more nutrition as well as protein” he commented around a mouthful.

“In the long term,” Katrina agreed. “These are made for a quick energy boost.”

She continued digging in her pack for her stash of botanicals all the while woofing down the energy bar. While Katrina didn’t like using chemical enhancements while on a mission but there were times, she knew, when it was justified. This was clearly one of those times. She was injured. This Sicarius was not only good but also in top form. She’d have to be very clever to get away from him. Given how she was feeling she concluded that she needed to incapacitate him to give herself more time. Ah, there it was, the pack of throxilum leaves. Katrina did a quick calculation; extracted two leaves and ate them with the last bite of the energy bar. Bleh. Those leaves tasted just awful. At the same time she also palmed one of her emergency paralytic ampules. She then closed the pack and slung it over her shoulder.

She looked at Sicarius. He was curious about what she had eaten but didn’t ask. Had he seen her palm the ampule and put it in her pocket? She wasn’t sure. Her eyes still weren’t working quite right. Well the throxilum should take care of that. “Shall we continue?” she asked switching back to Turgonian.

Over the next two hours Sicarius lead her on a roundabout route that was meant to confuse pursuers. Early in the process he retrieved his own pack from a hiding place high up in a tree overlooking the manor house. Katrina noted that he not only made detours that were intended to confuse human trackers but also ones that would muddle any scent trail that they had left. Interesting, she hadn’t known that the Turgonian’s used sent trackers. Another new development to report to Xenon.

It was a strange trip. Sicarius seemed to forget she was there at times, leaving openings that she could have exploited had she wanted to. Other times he seemed to welcome her cooperation in a particularly tricky maneuver. It wouldn’t be appropriate, Katrina knew, to leave him incapacitated in a situation where the searchers could find him. Even though he was Turgonian it was quite possible that if the searchers found him they’d kill him first and identify him later. From the way he’d been behaving Katrina wasn’t sure whether anyone on his side even knew he was in the area.

If he were running with minimal or no backup, she thought, he’d surely have a fallback where he could rest and hide. Sure enough, when they exited the woods she noted that they were near the Port Rochelle train switching yard. The switch yard itself was relatively open but it was abutted on one side by a jumble of old rickety warehouses. Some of them were clearly abandoned while others appeared to be in use as long term storage of some type. All in all it was a wonderful place for a hidey hole Katrina thought. Any search of the area would take a long time and be relatively noisy. Once could easily slip away or, depending upon how well hidden you were, just hole up and let the search go on past.

Sicarius led her expertly through the maze of buildings avoiding the few people who happened to be out and about at this early hour of the morning. They went over walls, though a few buildings, up a tree and finally ended up in an attic of one of the warehouses. It was a relatively secure location. There seemed to be no access from inside the warehouse, the sight lines were good and there were multiple exits. It was a perfect location to implement her plan.

Sicarius placed his pack on the floor then turned to look at her.

She also put down her pack. Now comes the tricky part, Katrina thought as she moved closer to him. It’s got look natural, spontaneous and non-threatening. She was surprised that he let her get quite close before a slight tensing of his muscles indicated that he was becoming concerned. As he tensed she reached out, grabbed one of his hands, pulled him into an embrace and whispered “thank you” just before clamping her mouth over his in a passionate kiss.

He was startled at first, but it didn’t take long for him to respond in kind. Very well trained, she thought, as the kiss escalated. In fact, his kissing skills were excellent and Katrina was seriously tempted to let things continue to see if he was just as good at other things as he was at kissing. As pleasurable as that temptation might be she just didn’t have the time to indulge. Giving a little moan she ran her hands up Sicarius’ back and slapped the ampule she had palmed earlier onto the back of his neck, injecting the paralytic into his bloodstream. It was a close thing. He realized what she had done in an instant and almost managed to get his hands up to break her neck before the drug took effect.

Katrina caught his weight and eased him down to the floor. The paralytic agent she had used affected the large muscle groups but left the autonomic functions as well as some of the smallest muscles alone. Sicarius would be fully alert and conscious but unable to move. He was also mad, she could tell. The glare he was giving her was something spectacular. If he hadn’t been paralyzed she would have been concerned.

“I really am sorry,” she explained to him. “If you weren’t so incredibly good I wouldn’t have had to resort to using this. Unfortunately, I need more than an hour to shut down my local network and get my operatives out. Between you and the Nurians their cover is blown anyway and I really can’t afford to let you capture any of them. If it was just me” she smiled at him, “I’d take my chances.”

He was still glaring at her. Katrina sighed and continued, “The drug will take four to six hours to wear off depending on your metabolism. I’m going to be making enough of a mess in town to cover my people’s exit that I doubt they’ll get around to do a proper building-to-building search this far out before you recover.”

Katrina paused, Sicarius wasn’t glaring at her quite so fiercely now. She hoped she was explaining things well enough so that he’d understand how her actions fit in the unwritten rules of the shadow game. Katrina continued, “I’m not going to bother to put this part and what I’m telling you right now in my report.” She smiled at him again. “Luckily, my boss trusts my discretion and won’t ask any awkward questions.”

Katrina reached out and touched his hair. “I just wanted you to know I appreciate the cooperation. I don’t think either of us would have gotten out alive without the other. When it comes right down to it I owe you one for this.” Then, giving into one of her impulses she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Keep yourself safe Sicarius,” she whispered “I hope that you’ll be alive to collect on the favor someday.”

With that she stood and left the attic.


	15. Chapter 15

Sicarius stood in front of the desk in Hollowcrest’s office watching him read the report for the third time. That report was a masterpiece of misdirection and omissions. There was not a single mention of the Kendorian spy, Katrina, at all. He was confident that he’d managed to account for all his known actions as well as the physical and documentary evidence. He’d even intentionally left a bit of vagueness in the report for Hollowcrest to ask questions about.

As he waited he mused on that last interaction with Katrina. Once they’d made it to the safety of the woods he understood that she’d need to try and either injure or otherwise incapacitate him to escape. Regardless of how much a _head start_ he gave her the concussion would slow her down enough for him to catch up and she knew it. His first plan had been to give her a few obvious opportunities to do so before he captured her.

Her first opportunity came when she retrieved her pack. When she pulled out the meal bar he expected it to be laced with something but she took a bite before tossing it to him. She’d also been open about eating the dried leaves. Even if he hadn’t recognized them as the stimulant throxilum he knew that it wasn’t an antidote to something in the bar. She wouldn’t have eaten them so openly if it had been. She had given him a strange look after she finished but he didn’t ask about it and she didn’t volunteer anything.

He made sure that she had several other opportunities to seriously injure or incapacitate him during the cross-country ramble he led her on. She must have noticed but she didn’t act on any of them. He’d used every trick of confusing a trail in his considerable arsenal some of which required her active co-operation. Sicarius had even given her what looked like a clean kill shot as a temptation. She hadn’t taken it.

During the ramble, about an hour after dawn, he had one of those strange epiphanies where he understood exactly what her intentions were. He’d started having these moments of intense clarity shortly after he’d started training to resist the mental sciences over two years ago. They didn’t happen often and most often occurred in the midst of a fight. He didn’t know what exactly they were but the knowledge had always been dead on accurate and he’d come to trust these sudden flashes of certainty. This one had resulted in a substantial change to his plan of action. Instead of attempting to capture her he had decided to let her escape. Sicarius figured that having a known quantity in a foreign intelligence service could be quite useful to him in the future if he survived. The only qualms about the decision he had at the time was that he was trusting, to an extent, not only his own life but the lives of Marathi and the unborn child to a foreign operative’s sense of honor and fair play. He wouldn’t have done it but for that flash of certainty.

He had been a bit surprised at Katrina’s method of incapacitating him. They had made it to his backup hide out in the warehouse when she had approached him. He knew she was making her move but he hadn’t expected it to start with a passionate kiss. That had been the most intense, sensual kiss of his life. Much different from the _training opportunities_ in seduction that Hollowcrest had provided. In fact, it had distracted him enough that when she had hit him with the drug he hadn’t been able to control his instinctive reaction and he’d tried to break her neck. It had been a very good thing that the drug she’d used had been extremely fast acting. The explanation Katrina had provided after he was paralyzed was surprising also. He hadn’t expected her to explain her actions. The admission that she owed him a favor was a bit of a shock. He’d have to remember that. Maybe he’d even get a chance to collect on it someday.

“So let me get this straight,” Hollowcrest’s voice recalled him to the present. “There was a Nurian cell working with Lavin Ravencrest to steal intelligence from Commander Ravencrest’s files. The Nurian killed the Commander and you took him and Lavin out?”

“Yes” Sicarius replied.

“The Nurian was an operative called The Shaman.” Hollowcrest continued, “One of their best. You didn’t mention any science based attack.”

Since it wasn’t a question Sicarius remained silent.

“Well, was there one?” Hollowcrest sounded slightly annoyed.

Sicarius decided on a slightly more detailed answer than a monosyllabic response, “I surprised him.” It wouldn’t do to make Hollowcrest too annoyed with him at this point.

Hollowcrest made a sour face, “Too bad, I was hoping to get an assessment of the anti-science training effectiveness.”

Ah. Hollowcrest wasn’t directly annoyed at him. He was more annoyed at the situation. That was good. It meant that Sicarius could safely engage in a bit more distraction of his commanding officer.

“So,” Hollowcrest glanced down at the report again, “Commander Ravencrest was attempting to subvert, on his own, a Kendorian cell headed by his mistress. When the Commander was killed the cell packed up and escaped?”

“Yes.” Sicarius reverted to a one word answer. Let Hollowcrest work for his information, he thought.

“How?”

“The Kendorian cell had an agent in the Commander’s estate house. A maid servant. When the Commander’s body was found, she must have taken word to the rest of the cell. Normal protocol required me to not reveal myself. By the time I made it back into Port Rochelle after avoiding the search patrols, the cell had set fire to the mistresses’ house and departed.” Sicarius intentionally omitted the _Sir_ at the end of his statement.

Hollowcrest didn’t notice the omission or if he did, didn’t react. He merely commented, “You didn’t miss them by much. As you suspected they took a smuggling boat. The boat was spotted several hours later by one of our warships. They couldn’t catch it but given its position when spotted I doubt anyone, even you, could have got there in time.”

What? Hollowcrest was complimenting him rather than ranting about his failure to catch the Kendorians. Sicarius was now on full alert. Something was amiss. Had Hollowcrest received other information that contradicted something in the report? Sicarius, squelched his reactions and waited to see how things would play out.

Hollowcrest was now looking a bit distracted as he closed the report then started drumming his fingers on top of it. “I’m glad you could wrap this one up quickly because we, the Empire, have another,” he paused for a moment then said with a slight smile on his face, “well problem isn’t quite the appropriate word for this one.” Hollowcrest looked directly at him then. “We need to heighten the security of the Barracks especially in and around the living quarters.”

Sicarius suddenly realized what was happening. “Against what type of threat?” he asked, this time belatedly adding the _Sir_ he’d omitted earlier.

“Primarily assassination,” Hollowcrest responded. “The Empress is pregnant and that’s going to make her a prime target. I’ve implemented increased security measures. I’m going to want you to see if you can break through them. Identify any holes and suggest how they can be eliminated. I want something robust in place before the public announcement in two weeks” he ordered.

“Understood” Sicarius said flatly and turned to leave, once again without saluting. Well, he thought as he walked out the office door, he was now committed to playing a high stakes version of the _shadow game_ against Hollowcrest for an extended period of time. Sicarius was somewhat surprised to realize that he was in some ways looking forward to the challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this one. There is a sequel that takes place several years later which I will be posting next.
> 
> As always (with apologies to the Bard):
> 
> If this writer has offended,  
> Think but this and all is mended.  
> That you have but tarried here,  
> While each chapter did appear,  
> And these words upon this theme,  
> Are of no import, only my dream.
> 
> It has been an honor to share my dream with you.
> 
> K2N2


End file.
